But it would be unjust to deny that he had great flexibility of style and full command over all the resources of the language. He is always elegant and flowing, and his works, such as they are, never sin against the canons of good taste. Perhaps the most pleasing of his shorter poems is a very beautiful sonnet on the portrait of his daughter.
A far more masterful and daring spirit was UGO FOSCOLO. His poem I Sepolcri attracted universal attention, but it can hardly be said that the promise of this poem was fulfilled by later works. He had brilliant gifts, but he was inclined to fritter them away on learned trifles. As a prose writer he exercised a wider influence. His Lettere di Jacopo Ortis, were to Italy much what Goethe's Werther was to Germany. He was an admirable critic, and his essays on Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio are valuable even at the present day. He took refuge in England, and some of his best articles were written in English, being subsequently translated into his mother-tongue. He died at Turnham Green, near London, in 1827.
Melchiorre Cesarotti translated Macpherson's Ossian, and was a powerful promoter of the romantic movement.
Ippolito Pindemonte wrote many poems distinguished by a gentle pensiveness, and he translated the Odyssey with considerable success.
Giovanni Berchet of Milan, contributed largely by his verses to kindle the fire of patriotism, but vigorous and stirring though they be, they have hardly sufficient finish and delicacy to rank as works of art.
Giuseppe Giusti was a satirist of amazing raciness and originality. He attacked the tyrannical Governments of his day, and he knew neither fear nor discretion. Those who can form an idea of what Mr. Gilbert's inexhaustible powers of grotesque versification would produce if directed towards political satire, may conceive what Giusti's poems are. He died of consumption in 1850.
Felice Bellotti, of Milan, rendered noble services to the literature of his country by his magnificent translation of the Lusiad of Camoens, the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius, and the tragedies of Æschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.
Giambattista Nicolini was the author of numerous tragedies, but his tendencies were as much political as poetical, and his poetry suffers in consequence.